Silenced
By Amy J Garner
Once a month or so the Queer and Affirming Writers Collective members are given a writers prompt and one week to complete the writing assignment. For October our prompt was: Write A like-able character walks into a room with a table that has needle and thread on it. The goal of the piece is to expose a character flaw of the character.
What follows is Amy J Garner’s piece, which she wrote in response to our prompt.
I don’t remember feeling any physical pain when he sewed my mouth shut. I actually don’t remember much at all. When I got there, the room was mostly empty. A table, some folding metal chairs leaning against the wall and two of the chairs, one for him and one for me, out. —facing each other. As if I’d want to sit and look at him. Maybe I did. At first. Or maybe I still do.
You’d think there would have been pain. Lots of it. And blood. And some fighting. Scratching. Punching. Biting. Whatever it took. But I sat quietly and let it happen. As if the sewing would be the end.
But it was just the beginning. What comes next is a slow, steady deterioration of me. I’m starving to death. Alone. He has long since left and I have gone about my day. No one seems to notice that my mouth is sewn shut. That I can’t speak. They ask me questions and when I don’t respond they move on. No one notices why I don’t answer. No one sees that I’m not actually human anymore.
Sometimes I rub my fingers back and forth over the stitches. They are a part of me and I love them. I relish in the knowledge of my own annihilation. I no longer have to participate in the game and I get to know that he’s to blame. My hate has a place to go. A person to remember. Someone to blame. And it’s not me.
Before he sewed my mouth shut, I only had myself to blame for not speaking up. I guess he did me a favor. Maybe I should find him. Thank him. Or maybe I should kill him. Take a knife and stab him in the back while he sleeps.
But I won’t. Instead I’ll fester and I’ll die. And I’ll find comfort in my own lack of control.